"Must a people disappear for us to know they exist?" -- Mano Dayak (1949-1995)

In Recognition of the Genocide

This website is dedicated to the hundreds and thousands of Tuareg men, women, and children, including many whole families, who have suffered and died over the past several decades, as a result of the deliberate exclusionary practicesthat have deprived the Tuaregs of critically needed food relief, medical care, and development. Governments have sought to silence the Tuaregs' legitimate complaints, through intimidation, arrests, rape, torture, extrajudicial execution and massacres, and to isolate them from the media and from humanitarian aid. HERE IS A TRIBUTE to the Tuareg people who have bravely continued to struggle for justice. May their voice be heard by the whole World.

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March 01, 2013

I just posted the following on Bruce Whitehouse's blog article. The propaganda war against the Tuareg people is being fought by people who do not even know them - including the writer of the blog article, who is an anthropologist.

Bruce
Whitehouse, you should be ashamed of yourself. You are no expert on the
Tuaregs to be saying such misleading and damaging things about them, and
you have grossly violated the anthropological code of ethics. No one
should take anything you say seriously because it is clear that you have
a lethal axe to grind on the Tuareg people, without any authority
whatsoever.

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) Code
of Ethics says anthropologists have an obligation toward vulnerable
populations, to carefully weigh the consequences of what they claim
about them. Your statements about the Tuareg people demonstrate your
partisan bias against them, at a time when people of Tuareg identity are
at high risk for genocidal attacks, in a very sensitive geopolitical
situation that is dangerously impacting them. You are in flagrant
default of the AAA Code of Ethics and you should be ashamed of yourself
for making claims and arguments that are damaging to the Tuareg people.
You owe an apology to the hundreds of thousands of Tuareg people that
you have disrespected at a time when they are fleeing racialized hatred
and genocidal attacks. Your words have added to the propaganda and
hatred against the Tuareg people.

For you to say that In Kati,
the burning of Tuareg homes wasn’t discrimination, it was “a
misunderstanding” is a gross misrepresentation of what happened at Kati.
The streets filled with mobs of people screaming “Death to the
Tuaregs!” The Tuareg people were chased, robbed, and had their homes
burned, and hundreds of thousands of Tuareg people have fled the
visceral hatred and horrific abuses against them in Mali. A year later,
they are still refugees, having lost their homes and livelihoods. What
happened at Kati is emblematic of the abuses and atrocities that Tuareg
people have suffered for the past 53 years. Your attempt to softpedal
the ethnic hatred that has motivated the government of Bamako and people
in the south is insulting and damaging to the Tuareg people. In
soft-pedaling the ethnic hatred, you are showing your support for it.

You have tried to shut up the Tuaregs who have posted on your blog,
telling them (in French) to keep their opinions to themselves, while at
the same time blathering your own racist opinions against the Tuareg
people. Tuareg voices have been shut up for much too long. They are
indeed “coming out of the woodwork” – your choice of words, a pejorative
usage for disgusting things like bugs that “come out of the woodwork.”
Your words constitute propaganda against the Tuareg people, and your
attempts to shut them up are utterly disgraceful for an anthropologist.
The Tuaregs are not bugs, and they are beginning to have their voices
heard by speaking out against unjust propagandists such as yourself. You
insulted one Tuareg who attempted to write in imperfect English, and
claimed you could not understand him – but it is plenty clear that the
Tuareg writer is bringing his own argument to bear on your damaging
words.

It’s true that you are “no expert on the Tuareg,” and
you should not be making arguments against them. You are unable to bring
clarity to the problems facing the Tuareg people, and you have no
authority whatsoever to be making the claims you are making against
them. As an anthropologist, you have exceeded the limit of ethnocentrism
and you are actively promoting perspectives that are damaging to a
vulnerable ethnic group that you do not even know well enough to discuss
responsibly.